On the other side of the economic, geopolitical, and military mess
we find ourselves in right now (provided, of course, that we survive
it), certain things that we have done routinely as a civilizationor
that have been done to all of usmust be changed, radically and
permanently.

The first is to establish widespread recognition that, in addition
to being immoral because it happens to be theft, taxation is the fuel
of war. If you remember nothing else from this essay, try to remember
that.

Taxation is the fuel of war.

No matter how any political administration promises to use the
money that it extorts from us, sooner or later, either directly or
indirectly, it will be diverted and used to "break things and kill
people". What it will break is civilization itself, and a great many
of the people that it kills won't just be foreigners, a majority of
them completely innocent of any wrongdoing, but our own sons and
daughters.

Likewise, the particular form of slavery that we politely call
"conscription" should be considered by everyone to be a provocation
and an act of war. Whenever we hear that, oh, say Canada, has begun
registering its kids for a potential draft (and this should definitely
include those programs intended to coerce individuals into any kind of
domestic service), they should be harshly confronted and persuaded to
desist.

Exactly as they should do when we draft our children.

At the same time, we must arm the people and disarm the state. We
now know from the experience of the past thirty years that "an armed
society is a polite society". Violent crime is much more effectively
suppressed by those who would otherwise be its victims, than by hordes
of government lackeys whose first thought is for their pensions. We
also knowthanks to people like the Vietnamese and the Afghansthat
a civil population in possession of small arms is more than a
match for any huge government equipped with high-tech, high-capital
weaponry.

On that account, among many other badly-needed reforms, we must
replace at least half of the publically-funded golf courses in this
country with shooting ranges, and draft legislation so that any time
another golf course or some other sports facility is being planned or
contemplated, a shooting range of equal value must be constructed, as
well. Ideally, government shouldn't do this sort of thing at all, and laws
like the one I've just suggested would most likely help put an end to
it.

Getting back to basics, it should be a major objective of any
popular reform movement to abolish Sovereign Immunity, that ancient
and highly evil custom under which "the King can do no wrong" and a
supposedly democratic government has to give its permission to be
sued.

Along with this reform, two others are called for. First, any
lawincluding a portion of the Constitutionthat shields politicians
from crimes they commit in office must be struck down. And to those
holdouts who maintain that if these things were done, the government
would be buried in lawsuits and unable to "get anything done" (and
this is bad because ... ?), you have but to adopt the "loser pays"
rule in civil court, to diminish the number of "nuisance" suits that are
filed.

There also needs to be a Penalty Clause written into the Bill of
Rights.

The corporate equivalent of Sovereign Immunity is called "Limited
Liability", a so-called "legal fiction" (English translation: a highly
profitable lie, courtesy of the splendid legal profession) under which
corporations are viewed and dealt with as individuals, the debts of
their owners are limited to whatever they have invested in the
corporation (this is exactly like fining a murderer only whatever he
paid for the knife, skillet, monkey-wrench, or gun he used to kill
somebody with), and the owners of corporations evade responsibility
for the evil committed by, say, a Halliburton or a Blackwater USA.
Without this change, while the politicians face war crimes trials, the
directors and stockholders can sit back and watch the whole thing on
TV.

Fractional reserve banking is a legalized form of counterfeiting
in which the counterfeitera bankerdoesn't even have to produce
funny-money, but just pretend that he has it. This practice, which is
proving disastrous to the ethical portion of the economy, must be
outlawed.

Back to basics once again: there will be no warin any form or
any kindwithout a formal Congressional declaration of war. Any
violation of this law will be reason for immediate summary removal
from office, and trial before a tribunal with the power to hang the
convicted.

In the case of a legal declaration of war, officeholders who voted
for it, or urged it publically or in Congress, will be the first (and
only non-volunteers) to put on a uniform and head straight for the
front lines, without regard to their age, health, sex, or any other
consideration. This used to be a wistful joke. It's time to make it a
reality.

To help prevent situations leading to war, there will be no more
government secrets, and politicians convicted of keeping a secret or
of lying to any member of the public for any reason whatever will be
subject to capital punishment, preferably by hanging on network
television.

Following war crimes tribunals for politicans and the officers of
corporations that have benefitted from a war, full restitution and
reparations will be paidto overseas victims as well as American
taxpayers and conscripteesby guilty individuals as well as by the
liquidation of corporate profiteers like Halliburton and Blackwater
USA.

A couple of other economic, geopolitical, and military thoughts:

Starving people in the Third World are not starving because
there's any lack of food. The world is buried in food; the only ones
who don't understand this are idiots like U2's Bono. They're starvng
because politicians and the militarythose who would rule others by
withholding what people need to livestand in the way of trade and
distribution.

The hideous skeletal forms you see on TV or in magazine ads are
being deliberately murdered through a process no less inhumane and
deliberate than those who were murdered by the Nazis in concentration
camps.

Exactly the same is true of energy. The world is drowning in oilit's
the second most abundant liquid on the planetand the only
reason it's recently become obscenely expensive is that, once again,
politiicians and their associates, in this case corporations, have
inserted themselves into the process of production and distribution in
the hope of establishing a hydraulic despotism over the lives of their
victims.

This is the regime we must oppose if we are to live in the peace,
freedom, progress, and prosperity that is our birthright as sapient
beings.

What are you prepared to do about it?

Four-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith has
been called one of the world's foremost authorities on the ethics
of self-defense. He is the author of 25 books, including The
American Zone, Forge of the Elders, Pallas, The Probability Broach,
Hope (with Aaron Zelman), and his collected articles and speeches,
Lever Action, all of which may be purchased through his website
"The Webley Page" at
lneilsmith.org.

Ceres, an exciting sequel to Neil's 1993 Ngu family novel
Pallas was recently completed and is presently looking for a
literary home.

Neil is presently working on Ares, the middle volume of the
epic Ngu Family Cycle, and on Roswell, Texas, with Rex F. "Baloo"
May.

The stunning 185-page full-color graphic-novelized version of The
Probability Broach, which features the art of Scott Bieser and was
published by BigHead Press
www.bigheadpress.com
has recently won a Special Prometheus Award. It may be had through the publisher, at
www.Amazon.com,
or at BillOfRightsPress.com.